March 31st 2015

Ah, one of those!

Last week we finally reached the "pointy end" of the hoard and uncovered more of the gold object we've seen poking out for some time. We now know therefore that "Perron's Thing" is actually "Perron's Brooch", (named after volunteer Vic Perron who annoyingly noticed it on a visit when I hadn't seen it in front of my nose for days.

What we have revealed is that it's very similar to the silver bracelet we found in another part of the hoard. It's cleverly designed so that a long gold wire is bent into a loop and both of its ends are then coiled loosely around the loop. This gives a bracelet that expands to fit over the hand and is then easily squeezed to fit the wrist.

We had our opening for the new Uncovering The Hoard exhibition last week and we are now open to the public seven days a week again so no more team ice cream breaks in the sun for a while. Visitor numbers look good so far and we've seen plenty of interested faces peering through the glass. Olga Finch, our Curator of Archaeology and I are also going over to Guernsey today for the opening of their Celts and Romans, Treasures and Trade exhibition which happens tonight. We borrowed a lot of their iron age collections last year so we've returned the favour this time with the choice findings from the hoard so far as well as other contemporary material from Jersey. Hopefully we'll be removing some of the large gold jewellery from the hoard before too long and these to will go on loan to their exhibition.